Poe Elementary School bombing

Poe Elementary School bombing
Location	Houston, Texas, United States
Date	September 15, 1959
Target	Students and teachers
Attack type	Suicide school bombing
Weapons	Suitcase bomb
Deaths	6 (including the perpetrator)
Non-fatal injuries	18
Perpetrators	Paul Harold Orgeron
Motive	Denial of son's enrollment

The Poe Elementary School bombing was a school bombing that occurred at Poe Elementary School in Boulevard Oaks, Houston, Texas, United States on September 15, 1959. Six people, including the perpetrator and his own son, were killed.

Paul Harold Orgeron, age 49, a tile-setter and ex-convict, had recently moved from Altus, Oklahoma to southern Houston, Texas with his seven-year-old son, Dusty Paul. According to Orgeron's ex-wife, Hazel, they divorced twice due to spousal abuse. Orgeron briefly rented at a nearby boarding house using the pseudonym Bob Silver. The landlord later said the father and son were quiet and had not caused any trouble.

Orgeron attempted to enroll his son in second grade at Edgar Allan Poe Elementary School but was denied since he lacked birth and health certificates for his son. He left the school office claiming he would return the next day with the documents.

Minutes after leaving the school office, around 10:00 am, Orgeron and his son approached a teacher, Patricia Johnston, on the school playground, who had been gathering her second graders for their return to the classroom. Orgeron, carrying a brown suitcase, gave her two pieces of paper to read. She was unable to understand them since the notes were illegible. Orgeron mumbled about "having power in a suitcase," the will of God and having to "get to the children".

Orgeron asked that the children gather around him, and as he waved the suitcase around, Johnston became alarmed upon seeing a doorbell button on the bottom of the suitcase and instructed the students to return to the building. She also instructed two students to fetch the school principal, R. E. Doty, and the school custodian, James Montgomery.

When the Principal and the Custodian arrived, Orgeron ignored Doty's instructions to leave the school grounds. Then Orgeron detonated the suitcase which contained perhaps six sticks of dynamite. The explosion claimed six lives, including both Orgeron and his son; two students; custodian Montgomery and a teacher, Jennie Kolter. Of the eighteen injured, principal Doty suffered a broken leg, and two children each lost a leg.

William Kolter, the son of Jennie Kolter, was chief resident at Hermann Hospital; he pronounced Jennie Kolter dead.

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